


Comfort

by fandomnumbergenerator



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, POV John Watson, Past Abuse, Past Drug Use, Unsafe Sex, because i'd already watched season 3 and these idiots are doomed, failed hurt/comfort?, i tried to end this on a fluffy note and i failed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:20:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomnumbergenerator/pseuds/fandomnumbergenerator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is a mess.<br/>John is trying to be the sensible one, and failing.<br/>Nothing gets resolved, but there's sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heart-broken

**Author's Note:**

> All canon dialogue was from Ariane Devere's amazing transcripts:  
> http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/26848.html#cutid1  
> http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/28352.html

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during A Scandal in Belgravia (December 2011).
> 
> Sherlock goes to John for comfort, but not in the way that John would have wanted.

I woke up already sitting bolt upright with my heart pounding, before I realized it was just Sherlock, wrapped in a sheet, standing at the foot of my bed. With a look I'd seen on my own face too many adrenaline soaked 3 ams. I gently asked, "What do you need?"

He looked at me with weirdly blank eyes and let the sheet drop. His body was pale and thin, almost glowing in the dim light.

I got out of bed and went to get him my bathrobe. But when I tried to wrap it around him, he just stood there. My heart started to pound again. I had never seen him this lost, this desolate. And then he took a step towards me, reached down and cupped my dick in his hand through my flannel pyjamas. I tried to take a step back, and almost fell backwards onto the bed.

He just said, "John," and put his hand down the front of my pyjamas, pulled my half-hard dick up and stroked it. I gasped. He pushed me back onto the bed, and pulled off my trousers.

He rummaged through the crumples sheet until he found a jar of vaseline, which he set next to my bed. I looked at it, and then at him, my eyebrows pulled practically back to my hairline, blinking rapidly. He sat down on the bed and pulled me on top of him. Surprising agile for someone who never seemed to actually live in his body. Under the smell of stale cigarettes, he smelled sharp and sour and almost chemical.

He opened the vaseline and pulled out a glob and smoothed it onto my cock. I closed my eyes to swim in the sensation, his hands bigger and colder and smoother than mine, but so much like what I'd thought about so many times. I opened my eyes with a start. This was too fucked up.

But he had pulled his knees up to his chest and was pulling my hips towards him. The tip of my cock brushed against his ass, and I pulled back with a start, but he had a firm grip on me. He looked at me with an animal intensity, and whispered, "Please," and spread his ass cheeks, rubbing more vaseline into himself, then guided my dick into him.

A girlfriend had walked me through this once. But we had both been pretty drunk, and that had been a long time ago. The main thing I remembered was to go slowly, and I tried. But Sherlock moaned when my glans pushed into him, and he pushed back against me hard, swallowing more of my cock. I closed my eyes. God, it felt amazing. I opened my eyes again to look at Sherlock, inhumanly beautiful, under me. His eyes were closed and he seemed so far away. But his breathing was ragged and his dick was hard between our bodies. He shifted the angle of his hips under me until I could hear him making a soft mewling sound. The part of my brain that found this incredibly hot shouldered the worried, second-guessing part of my brain out of the way, and my breathing started to break into deep groans. Sherlock reached down stroked his cock, eyes still closed.

His breath started to come in gasps, his eyes squeezed shut and his body started to buck and then with a twitch of his cock, he came in several long spurts. A couple thrusts later, I came with a shudder and collapsed onto him, our bodies slick with sweat.

I went to the bathroom to get a towel and to try to piss. With my pre-frontal cortex coming back on-line, the whole thing was a lot more upsetting. I had obviously been making a lot of stupid assumptions about Sherlock. Was probably now making a whole other set of stupid assumptions. But, as had been pointed out to me, I wasn't the one wearing the brains here.

This is not how I'd imagined it. Sleeping with Sherlock. And I had been imagining it, rather more often that I wanted to admit. Standing in the bathroom, I realized that if this were the only way I got to touch him, it would break my heart.

Tonight had so clearly just been about sex, about something Sherlock needed, a kind of oblivion. And I knew I should have refused. Gotten him into some clothes. Gotten him some tea. And now I needed to figure out what the latency period was on the new HIV tests. I was an idiot.

I came back to bed, and he was asleep -- maybe for the first time in days. This was probably not what Mycroft had meant when he said, "You have to stay with him." But who knew what Mycroft wanted or the limits of his desire to stage manage. What the fuck had happened in that train wreck of a family?

Irene Adler had stirred something up in Sherlock, with her mix of sex and power and devious cleverness. And the 57 moaning texts. She had gotten past his defenses in way I had been too slow to understand. And of course the drug, almost certainly ketamine. From what I could piece together, Sherlock had mostly used stimulants. Though he didn't seem wholly unfamiliar with ketamine.

As the sky got lighter, I watched him sleep. Saw the series of scars on his chest. Odd irregular cuts and white cigarette burns. I ran my fingers carefully across his skin, down his arms, past the ghosts of track marks, almost invisible against his white skin. I just wanted to hold him; to protect him. To kill whoever had hurt him so much.


	2. Bright red

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the sound of his violin from the sitting room. He barely looked at me when I came downstairs. I saw the breakfast from Speedy's gone cold and gelatinous on the table, and his spidery writing on the manuscript paper. He was composing music for her.

I felt a flush of anger and jealousy, and knew I was being stupid. I needed to let him grieve in his own way. But I couldn't be there. I grabbed my keys and stumbled down the stairs. Outside, I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. And I heard someone say my name.

I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful woman looking at me. All curves and dimples. The anti-Sherlock. And she was smiling.

And then the black sedan drove up. Mycroft. Fuck. Did he have any idea how I felt about Sherlock? Probably, and that made me useful. Loyal Nana to his Lost Boy brother. Fuck.

I made a pointed comment about Mycroft's power complex just as we drove into the Battersea Power Complex. I should have seen that one coming. Always so clever, these Holmeses.

I walked into the vast industrial space, trying to figure out how much I could bear to tell him. I started with the safe things (the things that were not, your brother threw himself at me, and I was unable to refuse). I said, "He’s writing sad music; doesn’t eat; barely talks ..."

And then I heard, "Hello, Doctor Watson," and I turned to look at her. I stared in shock and anger. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This wasn't going to get any better. Next time she broke him, she could fuck him. Her cock was probably bigger anyway. And bright red. Fuck.

She asked if she were special. She asked if I were jealous. I looked at her with a fury I hoped would strike her dead. I just wanted her to stop hurting him.

I said, "I'm not actually gay," and the unspoken "except" hung in the air between us.

I waited for her to say something cold and clever and mean, but instead she said, "Well I am. Look at us both." And I felt myself forgive her, a little.

And, of course, Sherlock heard it all. Not that it made any difference.


	3. Chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I relent and let John and Sherlock have some tender sex.
> 
> Set between A Scandal in Belgravia and The Hound of the Baskervilles (February 2012)

I woke up with a start, to see Sherlock at the door, fully dressed and looking like he was studying me.

Heart still pounding, I said, "Sherlock, I was sleeping! You know where my laptop is. Could you please refrain from installing Linux this time."

"I wanted to," he took a deep breath, "apologize. For dragging you into that last winter."

My anger evaporated. "Here, sit down." I moved over and patted the bed next to me. As he sat down, his hand brushed against mine and it was shockingly cold. "God, you're cold as ice."

"I was doing an experiment. I had to fill the kitchen sink with frozen eye balls."

I ignored the last part. "And you're even paler than usual. When was the last time you ate?"

"Tuesday. Eating is difficult, and time consuming."

I wanted to shake him, but I took a deep breath, and said, "Sit there. I've got a Dairy Milk in the drawer. Do you think you could manage a bite of that?"

"Probably." 

I didn't tell him that I had keeping the chocolate bar there for him, in case he needed it. I was never sure if that was the sort of thing he could deduce. I mean, of course, he _could_ deduce it, but would he bother.

He unwrapped the bar carefully with his long fingers and took a small bite. I rubbed his hands to warm them up, and he took another bite of chocolate.

"Sherlock, have you slept recently?"

"Recently enough"

"That's what I thought."

"Sleep is time consuming," he said.

I arched an eyebrow and said, "And difficult?" And he gave me a wry grin. He finished the chocolate bar, and licked the tips of his fingers like a cat. On an impulse I leaned forward and licked his fingers too, tasting the last of the chocolate. He looked at me, collecting data.

"Sherlock, is it OK if I touch you?"

He gave me a bemused look, "Of course you can touch me. I'm not that fragile." Then he narrowed his eyes, "You're not seriously going to hold that moment of weakness against me."

He was starting to puff up with indignation, so I didn't try to explain that I wasn't mad at him; just concerned. Though he probably would have thought that was worse. So I said, "I won't," and I leaned in to kiss his neck.

I unbuttoned his purple shirt, took it off and folded it carefully, laid it on my dresser. He watched me. Did he know how much it offended me to see a shirt that expensive crumpled in a corner? Probably not. His blind spot. One of his blind spots.

I sat next to him, leaned in and kissed his neck, which was surprisingly warm. He smelled like cigarettes and chocolate and his silly shampoo. I touched his cheek, which was only the slightest bit scratchy. He had some elaborate shaving rituals, but he also just seemed so young, even if he was only five years younger than me. I pulled his chin towards me and kissed him, sucking his lip then stroking my tongue against his, and he followed my lead. I closed my eyes. Held the back of his head while I kissed him. Inhaled the smell of him. I pulled away from the kiss and panted into his neck. I was trying hard to go slowly, to make this as different as possible from the last time, but I was started to lose my composure. My dick was painfully bent in my pyjamas and I adjusted it quickly.

I looked at Sherlock; his eyes were closed and his face had gone slack, his mouth a little open. He looked even younger. I gently bit his lower lip, and he kissed me. I kissed his neck and his shoulder. I ran my fingers down the center of his (white, almost hairless) chest and my tongue down his arm. I got to his inner elbow and he gasped. The strongest reaction I'd gotten out of him, but I decided it was better not to pursue it. I kissed his stomach instead. Down the line of fine hairs to his trousers. I could feel his dick through his jeans and rubbed my hand along the warm bulge in the denim.

I undid his belt and unbuttoned his fly. I laid him back on the bed. Pulled off his jeans and his pants. Stopped for a moment to just look at his cock, lying against his stomach. I was shivering a little, maybe from the spring damp, but also from nerves. I reached out to stroke the underside slowly, felt it twitch slightly in my hand. Leaned down, kissed his inner thigh, his femoral triangle, felt his pulse under the hot skin. He made a little moan, and I felt myself getting more turned on. I took the head of his penis in my mouth. Tried to remember the details of the best blow jobs I'd ever gotten, realizing I wasn't really sure of the mechanics from the other side. 

I held the base of his penis in my hand and sucked the glans against my palette, cupping the bottom side with my tongue. I could hear Sherlock making quiet humming hmmms in the back of his throat, and it felt them in my body like a deep thrumming. I ran the tip of my tongue down the frenulum, feeling its taut sharp line. I kept my hand at the base so I wouldn't gag and moved my mouth up and down the shaft.

I switched back and forth between the head and the shaft, and he seemed to be enjoying it, but I was starting to get an ache in my jaw and I noticed that the hmmms had stopped. I lifted up my head, stroked his cock gently with my hand. "Sherlock, what are you thinking about?"

"Semen splatter patterns as forensic evidence."

"Um, is there something different I should be doing?"

"Sorry. What you're doing is lovely," he said, trying to sound encouraging, but probably just humoring me.

"Give me a minute." I didn't want to let him see how much I wanted this to work. How much I needed to give him a little uncomplicated pleasure.

I got the lube out of the drawer (yes the same drawer as the chocolate, and this time, condoms). Back in bed, kneeling between Sherlock's knees, I squirted too much lube onto my fingers and it dribbled onto the sheets. Rested my index finger against his anus, not moving it for a moment while I went back to sucking his cock. I slowly pushed one finger in, then two. Felt the hot smooth membranes beyond the knot of muscle. Worked my fingers deeper inside, then started moving them back and forth. Sherlock started to come to life under me, rocking his hips between my mouth and my fingers, and I could feel myself getting harder in response to his pleasure. I could feel his glans swelling and taste pre-cum, feel blood pulsing in the shaft and his balls getting tight. I stopped trying to do anything complicated with my mouth, but let him move his cock back and forth between the tight O of my lips. His back arched and he came with a whimpering moan. Hot liquid at the back of my throat.

I pulled his cock out of my mouth and laid it on his stomach. Inched up next to him to kiss his neck. He opened his eyes and smiled at me, a blurry, half-lidded smile. I fought the urge to say something inane.

He nudged me onto my back and ran his hand down my stomach. Stroked my cock, which jumped a little in his hand.

He positioned himself between my legs, and I felt his mouth hot on my dick. I let out a groan of pleasure. Louder than I'd meant to. He cupped my balls in his hands, stroking them gently in time with his mouth. Which was doing something I couldn't figure out, some combination of sucking and tongue that made me feel like I was drugged. I stopped trying to guess. I could ask him later. I hoped.

I ran my fingers through his hair. (How long had I been wanting to do that?) Rested my hands on the top of his head. My breath was ragged and half panting. I was on the edge, grabbing his hair harder than I meant to, then bucking under him. Groaning and panting and finally laughing.

"Kiss me," I said, and he pulled himself up over my body, and kissed me, and I kissed him back sloppily. We collapsed back onto the pillows and I fell asleep with my head in the dip between his pectoral and deltoid, probably cutting off all circulation to his arm, but he didn't complain.

Sherlock thrashed in his sleep, pulling the sheets off the bed and somehow tangling them around his neck. I tried to gently untangle him. He rolled over and kneed me in the stomach, hard, grabbing me between his knees and not letting go. I managed to extract myself and to spoon behind him. I woke up to his voice, and realized he was talking in his sleep, lecturing on some new form of cigarette ash. I nudged him and he was quiet again.


	4. The mistress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock plays John's favorite song on the violin. And John and Sherlock have a relationship talk.
> 
> Set between A Scandal in Belgravia and The Hound of the Baskervilles (March 2012)

I woke up to the sound of violin. Came downstairs to find Sherlock in his bathrobe, silhouetted against the window. He was playing something light and strangely familiar.

I suddenly recognized it and laughed. "Is that Champagne Supernova? I didn't know you liked that song."

He finished the final refrain of "When we were getting high" and set down his violin.

"I don't. It's facile, predictable and passionless. But I found it in your Most Played folder in iTunes. You really do have terrible taste."

But it had been a sweet gesture, so I tried not to sound too peeved when I said, "Well, thank you for playing it." He flashed me a broad grin.

"Sherlock, what was that last night?" I knew I was making a hash of this, but I had to know. I couldn't bear another two months (six months? forever?) of pretending nothing had happened.

"Oh John, I thought even you could have figured that one out. And they call _me_ The Virgin. Though, I think I may have underestimated your powers of deduction. For a straight boy, you managed to deduce quite a lot about my cock."

I flushed with self-consciousness and a tinge of anger. "Stop being such a prick. This is actually important to me."

"You know I'm married to my work." He gave me a look of his own arch significance. But then he looked at me a little sadly. "Could you ever be happy being the mistress?"

I closed my eyes. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting. I looked up at him and said, "I'm not sure."

I looked down, and then asked him, "Could you tell me what happened? I'm sure I shouldn't be asking, so you don't have to tell me."

"I could just give you a clue and let you deduce it for yourself. But, no.

"Things went to shit after Mycroft went to Eton. And I ended up at a special school.

"He was the music teacher. He took me under his wing; taught me to play violin. I thought I had everything under control. But Mycroft figured out what was happening and intervened. Somehow got me transferred to Harrow. Even then, he knew how to pull strings.

"When I was at uni, another boy tried to bring a case against the school, but the case fell apart. The boy killed himself. The headmaster said that none of us could be trusted; we were all disturbed. Then he settled for an undisclosed sum, and moved to the Isle of Mann.

"And the music teacher committed suicide. Well, apparent suicide. The evidence never quite fit together.

"So, John, my gallant John, there's no one for you to shoot." I felt myself flush again, embarrassed that he'd been able to read me so easily, but also wanted to protest that I could do things other than shoot people. He kissed my forehead gently.

"Though I do now expect you to always have a drawer stocked with chocolate bars to comfort me in my darkest moods."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The child sex abuse case is loosely based on the story of John Wadlow at Underley Hall in Kirkby Londsdale in 1997, and this account (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/12061/) of Lawrence Lessig's experience at the Boychoir School.


	5. Impressing John

I thrashed myself awake, yelling, heart pounding. Tried to lie back down. Take some deep breaths. Clear my head and just watch where my mind was going. And where it was going was to Sherlock's mouth on my cock, my hand tangled in his hair. Which was not helping me get back to sleep.

I went downstairs to see if I could scavenge anything edible out of the fridge. Give my parasympathetic nervous system a little nudge. And then probably have a wank. Even though that was definitely going in the wrong directions -- towards more hung up on my flatmate, not less.

But when I got downstairs, Sherlock was lying on the sofa, fingers tented and resting against his lip. I looked at him a beat too long, and he looked up at me.

"John, are you OK?"

"Yeah. Mostly."

"Anything I can do?"

I stopped and looked at him. Gave him a crooked smile, "That seems kind of out of character."

"Well, when I say 'anything'…" He gave me a wolfish grin.

I felt a pulse in my dick and squeezed my eyes shut for a second to clear my head. "You. Are. Impossible." I said through clenched teeth.

"Clearly not," he smirked. He sat up on the sofa and patted the spot next to him, and I sat down. He laid his hand on my dick and let it rest there.

"So what do you want?" I asked slowly.

He looked at me seriously for a second and said, "To impress you."

I was taken aback by his sudden frankness. Said, "You don't have to impress me." He just shook his head and took my hand and lead me back to my room. Pulled the tangled covers off the bed and sat me down. Sat next to me, leaned over and kissed my neck. First a chaste dry kiss. Then his mouth open breathing hot against my jugular. Then smearing his mouth back towards my shoulder and biting into my trapezius. I gasped and then groaned. A shock running from my neck to my cock, which twitched against my pyjama bottoms. Sherlock put his hand over my cock and rubbed it lazily. Kissed his way from my neck to my jaw. I turned towards him, mouth slightly open and he kissed me. Biting my lip a little before finding my tongue with his. I was breathing into his mouth, inhaling him with each breath. Letting myself sink into the sensation.

"You smell nice," I whispered, "You quit smoking."

He pulled back and tugged up on my shirt, running his hands across my stomach. I pulled my shirt off. Then reached for his robe, pulling it down over his shoulders. Started struggling with his shirt buttons. He gently pushed my hands out of the way and smoothly undid the rest of the buttons and shrugged the shirt off.

He knelt in front of me. Ran his fingers along the waistband of my pyjamas, pulling it up and over my cock, which jumped a little. He pulled te pyjamas off, looked me up and down and smiled appreciatively, with maybe a touch of smugness. He fixed his eyes on mine was he lowered his head, and lifted up my cock to run his tongue along the underside from the base to the head. I shivered.

He stood up, pulled off his trousers and his pants in one fluid motion. Laid me back on the bed and pushed up my knees. Crawled between my legs, spread them gently and licked from my anus to my perineum, his tongue hot and wet and smooth. "Oh God," I grunted as he swirled his tongue, alternating between short fast licks and slow lapping. I rested my hand on his head, pushing my fingers through his hair. He pulled away and I gasped.

He got up and pulled the lube out of the drawer, squeezed a blob onto his fingers, crawled back between my legs and used his other hand to guide my cock into his mouth. Smeared the lube on my ass and rested the tip of his finger against my anus. He moved his mouth up and down the shaft of my cock, stopping to focus on the head, as he started pushing gently with his finger. By body flinched and tensed.

He took his mouth off my cock, and said, "Shhhh. Don't fight it. Push into it." I took a deep breath and pushed and his finger slipped in. He stroked it gently back and forth as he went back to running his tongue around my glans. He pulled his finger out slowly, then pressed it against my anus again. I pushed into him, onto what must have been two fingers. He moved them in time with his mouth, and I had to hold myself back from bucking under him. My breath, which had already been ragged, was coming out as guttural groans. I bit on my hand to try to muffle what was quickly turning into loud moans and rested the other hand on Sherlock's head. An electric connection between his fingers, my ass, my cock, his head and my hand.

I was quickly getting close and he must have felt it, because he moved deeper and faster, both his mouth and his fingers. I lost control of my bucking hips and came apart under him, thrusting down his throats, cuming with a barely throttled yell. He pulled his mouth off my softening cock and I looked up at him, dazed and half-lidded. He pulled his fingers out slowly and wiped them on the sheet.

"Amazing," I panted. And he gave me a cat who ate the canary smile. Pulled himself up and kissed me, his hard cock pressed between his stomach and my hip.

"Seriously," I said, "What do you want."

"Fuck me."

"I don't think that's going to work; do you have a second choice?" I said, but he just smiled.

"We'll give it a minute." He curled up with his head on my good shoulder. And I reached down and laid my other hand on his cock, circling my fingers around the head and slowly pulling his foreskin back and forth over the glans. His cock twitched in my hand and I felt his breath get deeper and faster against my chest. He nuzzled into my neck. And ran his fingers through my hair, down my face, resting his finger tips against my lips for a moment before pulling them down my neck, my chest, my stomach. He pulled away from my hand, propped himself up and retraced the same path with his tongue, working his way down my body. By the time he got to my stomach, I could feel my dick starting to respond again. He put my still mostly soft cock into his mouth and sucked gently. I lifted up my head to look down at him, the curtain of dark curls obscuring his face. Whatever he was doing with his mouth was working and soon I was fully hard again. He pulled himself up to reach for the lube. And I scrambled up to fish around in the drawer for a condom. He raised an eyebrow, then gave a resigned shrug, as if to say, if you really think it's necessary.

He lay back on the bed, and I knelt between his legs . Pulled my foreskin back, and rolled the condom on. Squirted lube onto my palm, and twisted my hand around my dick to slick it with lube. Put more lube on the tips of two fingers and laid them against Sherlock's anus. He pushed into them and groaned as I smeared the lube inside and around. He rocked himself back and forth on my fingers and gave me a look of raw desire, and I felt myself get harder. I leaned forward, positioned the head of my cock against his anus, holding it in place with my hand. I pushed gently and let him push back into me. Gasped, "Oh God," as I felt the ring of muscle move past my glans. I stopped moving and just drank in the sensation of being inside him. Of his long pale body under him, of my cock half in him.

He took a couple deep breaths, and said, "OK. You can move now." I pushed further into him. He pulled his knees out to the side and rested his ankles on my back. His eyes closed and his face slack.

I moved slowly inside him, and he opened his eyes. "Harder," he mouthed. He reached down between our bodies and grabbed his cock. I could feel his hand rubbing between us in time with my strokes. I focused on thrusting into him, on listening to his breathing, which was dissolving into throaty groans. And then I could feel him starting to come apart, his movements stuttering, and it started pulling me along. I tried to keep my pace steady, a little faster, a little deeper and then I felt him arching under me, moaning and gasping, tightening around my cock. "Oh God," I moaned. He dug his fingers into my shoulders as he came, his orgasm pushing me over. I collapsed on top of him, sweaty and panting. Kissed his chest sloppily and propping myself up to grab the base of the condom and pull out. I went to the bathroom to wipe off. Brought a towel back for Sherlock, who was splayed out across my bed. I dropped the towel on his stomach, and scrabbled around on the floor for the bedclothes. 

I pushed Sherlock over to make room on the bed. But couldn't sleep, just lay next to him, overthinking. I couldn't do this. It was too close to a real thing.

When I was younger, I had stumbled through friends with benefits, though those girls had been more benefits than friends. Girls from uni who liked to go out for a few drinks and eat greasy food and watch stupid movies and didn't want to feel tied down. And when we got bored with the sex, there wasn't much left. I was getting too old for that crap. And, Sherlock was actually my friend. Even if he was a weird alien sociopath, high-functioning or not. He was pretty much my only friend any more. I was sort of avoiding everyone I knew before, and it's not like living with Sherlock made it easy to make new friends. It was too much, and Sherlock didn't care, because it was all just transport anyway. And he just wanted me to keep the boredom and restlessness at bay.

I went downstairs and tried to sleep in my chair.


	6. Chapter 6

I woke up sore and tired, with a sharp pain in my neck where my shoulder had cramped up. I stood in the shower until the hot water ran out, and came out to find Sherlock in the kitchen, doing something. I made some tea and sat back down in my chair; picked up the crappy spy thriller next to it. Apparently, neither of us was going to say anything.

He followed me into the living room and opened my laptop.

"Sherlock." He looked up at me for a second, and then back at the computer. I made myself spit it out. "Sherlock, I can't keep having sex with you and having it not mean anything."

"What do you mean, mean anything? It makes me feel better. I sleep better. It makes me nicer." He gave me a wicked grin. Even he knew he was being a dick. He couldn't have missed that I'd slept in my chair.

I said, "I want more."

He narrowed his eyes and I could see that he was working himself up into a fury. "No. You. Don't. You want less. You want Sarah or Jeanette or what's-her-name or that other one. You want someone nice and caring and blandly pretty. I am arrogant, self-centered, abrasive. Maladjusted. Unmanageable. Only one person has even come close to being able to handle me. And things didn't end well for him." He paused for a beat and glared at me, daring me to say something. "Maybe you should just storm out. I'm sure somewhere in London there's an uncomfortable sofa that is feeling neglected."

I said, "I won't leave."

"Fine. I have a case anyway." He grabbed something that looked suspiciously like an antique harpoon and slammed the door behind him.

When he came back two hours later he was covered in blood and still pissed off. Manic. Childish. Needling.

The way he said, "John, I need some," made it clear he wasn't talking about cigarettes, or wasn't just talking about cigarettes. I couldn't tell if he was trying to push my buttons, or if his brain really was ripping itself to pieces. I took a deep breath. A number of deep breaths. Forced myself to stay, to try to be the voice of reason.

A client appeared. We ran off on a wild, stupid, half-assed investigation with illegal handguns and fake government IDs. Like we were a couple of 11 year olds playing pirates. And it seemed to be working. We could slip back into being whatever we were, before. Though when Sherlock started decompensating, yelling that he was fine and that he didn't have friends, I had to leave. Had to get out and not say something unforgivable. Because everything was too close to the surface and I'd been pushing it down all day.

He didn't come back to the room that night, which was just as well. And the next day, he apologized, which seemed to involve more insults Then we ran around like maniacs some more, which seemed like the only time that things were OK, even if we were armed and tripping and running around the moors.

We went back to the room and collapsed into our respective beds.

And then I was back in the hospital in Germany. Lying in a narrow hospital bed, trapped and confused, hallucinating, held down by a giant hound, its jaws worrying at my bloody shoulder. I tried to yell but I couldn't. I thrashed at the dog with all my strength, and woke up with Sherlock's hand on my arm.

He looked at me in concern, and rubbed his hand down my arm in short strokes. I was sitting up, panting, trying to unclench my stomach. Deep breaths. I closed my eyes and let myself pull back a little from my body and the adrenaline coursing through it. Sherlock's hand felt nice.

And then he put his palm over my cock and I flinched back, eyes open, heart still racing. He made a low shushing noise, like he was calming a spooked horse, and started to gently rub his palm against me. And I realized he was trying to be soothing.

I barked out a laugh. "Sherlock. Not now. I don't think all the drug's out of my system yet." I took a deep breath. "Later. When we're home." He looked at me for a moment and I gave him a little nod. "Just let me read for a little while and get some more sleep."


	7. Unspoken

We left in the morning. Did he think the drug was out of our system? Yes, no permanent effects.

And he had been the one who had locked me in the lab. Trapped me in a top secret lab and run psychological experiments on me. But he smiled and laughed and I shook it off. What was I expecting from him?

And I sat next to him in Mycroft's Land Rover. (Did Sherlock even have a license?) I was buzzing with nerves or anticipation, trying to keep my leg from jumping. Was I really giving in this easily? Some running around in the middle of the night with a gun in my hand, and it was all fine? But it was more than that. The sense that maybe I was already getting everything Sherlock knew how to give. "I don't have friends. I've just got one." He must know that wasn't true, of course Greg and Molly and Mrs. Hudson were his friends. And I wondered if he knew how to be friends with someone he wasn't sleeping with. And his attempt to comfort me out of a drugged nightmare with sex. He could make angry so easily, and so protective. Like he was missing some basic level of self-protection. Like his sense of risk was totally miscalibrated

Or maybe I just wanted to fuck him. It's not like I was so well calibrated either.

By the time we got the car returned and got back home, I was too far past arguing with myself. When we got inside the flat, I pushed Sherlock against the door. Buried my face in his neck, still hot from his scarf. Rubbed my stubble across his collar bones, and breathed in the warm human smell of him. Pulled his face down and kissed him. Sucking and biting his lip. Flicking my tongue against his, until he was kissing me back. I pushed my thigh between his legs, and he bent his knees to get our bodies to align, but the position was too awkward.

I pulled back. "Let's go upstairs." He gave me a little nod, a little ceding of control.

I pushed him onto my bed, straddling him, his cock hard against my hip as I buried my face in his neck, pulling his shirt back to bite his neck. I fumbled with the buttons, and he took pity on me and undid the rest, while I unbuttoned my shirt and threw it on the floor. I moved over the bed so I could unbutton his trousers, pushing them down to where he could kick them off. Then his pants. I leaned over him. Spread his legs apart. Kissed and sucked the crease of his thigh. Worked my way back to his perineum, his balls. Felt his cock twitch against my chest. Sucked on my finger, then rubbed it gently across his anus, while I took the head of his cock in my mouth. I sucked the glans against my palette until it was full and smooth and dark.

I pulled back and said, "Hands and knees."

I went to the drawer and pulled out a condom and what looked like a new bottle of lube. I quirked an eyebrow at Sherlock, and he smirked. I narrowed my eyes at him, but threw the condom on the bed, and started working on getting the bottle open.

The lube was thick and oily as I dribbled it on two fingers and pushed them into his ass, as he pushed back against me. Rolled on the condom and slicked it with lube. Nudged his legs apart with my knee, and he gave a soft groan that made my cock twitch. I lined up and pushed in slowly and waited, feeling him around me, as he took a couple slow deep breaths. Then he pushed back against me and I started to move.

He pulled his ankles in against mine, closing me in. He arched his back, searching for the right angle, pressing his chest into the bed, his arm trapped under him and his hand on his cock. I wrapped my fingers around his bony hips to pull him back. His skin so much paler than mine, almost blue in the dim light.

I leaned over him, feeling his back against my chest. He turned his head and rubbed his face against my hand, licked my palm. I curled two fingers into his mouth, and he rubbed his tongue down the sensitive skin between them. "Oh God." It was too much. But he was close too, his breath coming out as panted groans. I stopped for a moment to pull myself back, then started thrusting slowly. His hand sped up, and with a keening moan, he started to clench around me, pulling me over the edge.

I collapsed on top of him, pushing him into the bed, and tried to catch my breath for a second before I pulled out, took off the condom and went to get a wet towel.

I handed him the towel and got in to bed next to him. I kissed his shoulder, and rolled over to sleep back to back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me forever to write, and I think it's going to be the last chapter. I really tried to follow the standard arc and get them into a good relationship, but I couldn't. So you'll just have to settle for sex.
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr](http://buffer-overrun.tumblr.com/post/137693822346/comfort)


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